Sheriff Arpaio: Obama birth certificate a ‘forgery’
By Stephen Dinan
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The Washington Times
Updated: 3:08 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, 2012
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday he suspects the birth certificate President Obama released last year is a forgery — and also raised questions about the authenticity of the president’s selective service card.
“Based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in paper format as claimed by the White House.”
Sheriff Arpaio said at least two crimes could have been committed in his view through the forgery. He said he is not accusing Mr. Obama of crimes, but said “there remain a lot of questions which beg for answers.”
He released a 10-page report detailing what his investigators said were “inconsistencies” in the text characters of the birth certificate image the White House released, and also questioned details of the computer file itself.
Some of those claims had earlier been raised on the Internet as well, and the White House has rejected them.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It released the long-form certificate last year after repeated questions were raised by conservative activists and conspiracy-theory websites questioning the authenticity of the short-form certificate Mr. Obama released during the 2008 campaign.
The Justice Department has accused Sheriff Arpaio of civil rights abuses, but he said he began his investigation in August 2011 after tea party members from Surprise, Ariz., a town within Maricopa County, signed a petition challenging the certificate.
Sheriff Arpaio detailed former law enforcement officers who constitute what he called his “cold case posse” to do the investigation. He said no taxpayer dollars were spent.
He was joined in his press conference by Jerome Corsi, an author who has been critical of Mr. Obama. He was also one of those who took a critical look at Sen. John Kerry’s military service during his 2004 presidential bid.
Sheriff Arpaio said he went into the investigation with an open mind, and would have been happy to clear Mr. Obama.
